Back to Local Government Home Page

The National Improvement and Efficiency Strategy identifies that “Local Authorities and their partners are responsible for driving their own improvement. They will lead the identification of local improvement priorities, the drive to secure continuous improvement across local public services and the achievement of ambitious LAA outcomes”.

Sport England and partners have developed a range of tools which can assist local authorities and other organisations on their self-improvement journey.

Culture and Sport Improvement Toolkit
Towards an Excellent Service
National Benchmarking Service
Quest

Culture and Sport  Improvement Toolkit

The Culture and Sport Improvement Toolkit (CSIT) has been developed from earlier  toolkits that focused on improving individual culture and sport services.  It is a response to local government’s desire to see a single improvement tool for the  sector.

CSIT amalgamates the purpose, function and content of ‘Towards an excellent service’ (TAES), ‘Arts at the Strategic Centre’ and ‘Library peer review’.  It is supported by a range of organisations serving culture and sport and has been developed involving them in the planning, piloting and drafting phases.

CSIT is designed to underpin continuous improvement and support councils that want to identify their strengths and weaknesses in culture and sport.  

Single Improvement Tool

Towards an Excellent Service

TAES is not a product, or a badge but more about an approach to helping organisations assess for themselves how and where to get better at what they do. It has a set of tools that can support continuous improvement in organisations as they take a journey towards excellence.  At the heart of TAES lies self assessment and improvement planning using the TAES Framework.  This can bring significant benefits to organisations, customers, communities and to sport and cultural services.

Local Authorities can access guidance below:
TAES LA Guidance

A specific adapted version of TAES has been developed through a sub-group of the Sport England CSP Project Team involving a number of CSP Directors which can be found by clicking on the link below:
TAES CSP Guidance

National Benchmarking Service

Sport England’s National Benchmarking Service (NBS) provides local authorities with robust information on the performance of their sports facilities compared with similar facilities across the country.

Each participating leisure centre will understand its performance in a national context and use its information to improve its customer service, income, attraction of target groups and other performance indicators.Detailed advice and guidance can be found:
NBS Guidance
www.questnbs.info

Quest

Quest is the UK Quality Scheme for Sport and Leisure.  It is a tool for continuous improvement, designed primarily for the management of leisure facilities and leisure development.

Quest defines industry standards and good practice and encourages their ongoing development and delivery within a customer focused management framework.
Detailed information can be found:
www.questnbs.info